Haunting echoes of horrific 1940 Little Falls train wreck

Philadelphia crash echoes Little Falls derailment in 1940

Inside page of the Times Union from April 21, 1940, showing the fatal train crash in Little Falls, N.Y., where an westbound New York Central Lake Shore Limited derailed and crossed two tracks killing 30, including the engineer, and injuring 100 on April 19, 1940. (Times Union) less

Inside page of the Times Union from April 21, 1940, showing the fatal train crash in Little Falls, N.Y., where an westbound New York Central Lake Shore Limited derailed and crossed two tracks killing 30, ... more

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Inside page of the Times Union from April 21, 1940, showing the fatal train crash in Little Falls, N.Y., where an westbound New York Central Lake Shore Limited derailed and crossed two tracks killing 30, including the engineer, and injuring 100 on April 19, 1940. (Times Union) less

Inside page of the Times Union from April 21, 1940, showing the fatal train crash in Little Falls, N.Y., where an westbound New York Central Lake Shore Limited derailed and crossed two tracks killing 30, ... more

Haunting echoes of horrific 1940 Little Falls train wreck

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Little Falls

The Lake Shore Limited was 21 minutes behind schedule when it pulled out of Albany at 10:09 p.m. on April 19, 1940, raked by sleet and wet snow.

Veteran engineer Jesse Earl, 65, of Albany, a month shy of retirement, was eager to make up for lost time. He pushed the throttle on Engine No. 5315 until it hurtled through the stormy blackness at more than 70 mph.

Nearly 200 people were aboard the 15-car train. Some passengers slept in berths in the nine Pullman sleepers, lulled into slumber by the gentle rocking as the train churned through the Mohawk Valley, bound for Chicago.

Earl had made this run hundreds of times, without incident, and was cognizant of the need to slow the train's speed to less than 45 mph on the sharp and treacherous bend 72 miles west of Albany at Little Falls where the track was squeezed between a cliff of bedrock and the Erie Canal. It was known as the Gulf Curve. And it was feared.

It was the site of a deadly train crash in 1903 and the New York Central Railroad — "fast and safe" was its motto — imposed a lower speed at the Little Falls curve in response.

Trying to shave precious minutes, Earl waited until he was than one mile from the curve before he applied the brakes. The train was traveling at more than 60 mph and perhaps as fast as 78 mph — almost twice the recommended speed — when the engine derailed and the locomotive slammed into the cliff. It exploded into a massive fireball of blue-orange flame and acrid black smoke that was seen and heard for miles around.

Cars and steel rails peeled off in the traumatic force and puddled into a twisted heap of torn and shredded metal that sent a high, keening mechanical screech echoing down the valley. The sickening noise was followed by the muted, plaintive screams of the injured.

The "worst train wreck of the century" left 31 dead and nearly 140 injured. Earl the engineer died in the crash, but a lengthy investigation concluded its cause was excessive speed and human error.

Bernard J. Malone Jr. grew up in Little Falls and recalled hearing his late father tell stories about pulling bodies from the wreckage 75 years ago.

"He was a young attorney in town who answered a siren and call for able-bodied men to rush to the Gulf Curve because there had been a terrible accident," said Malone, a retired state Supreme Court Appellate Division judge who was born three years after the wreck. His father, Bernard J. Malone Sr., died in 2004.

Malone said his father talked about what he witnessed in the aftermath of the Little Falls train catastrophe the way he spoke about his experiences in World War II.

"He talked about it only when he was asked, without much detail," Malone said. His father told Malone and his siblings when they were growing up to stay away from the crash site. "He said it was too dangerous."

When Malone, now senior counsel at Whiteman Osterman & Hanna law firm in Albany, saw the news on TV of Tuesday's deadly crash in Philadelphia — which killed eight people and injured more than 200 — he had an unsettling feeling in his gut. He was thrown back to a childhood shaped by the gruesome Little Falls wreck at the Gulf Curve.

On Tuesday, engineer Brandon Bostian, 32, of Queens, was traveling at 106 mph — more than twice the speed limit of 50 mph— as he entered a sharp curve and the train derailed.

"All I could think of was Little Falls and the Gulf Curve wreck," Malone said. "There's something terribly wrong in this age of advanced technology when one young man is placed in a situation where this could happen once again."

Railroad historian Richard Barrett, of Colonie, was similarly troubled by the haunting echoes between crashes attributed to excessive speed on curves and human error that include the Little Falls fatal crash 75 years ago; a 2013 crash of a Metro-North Railroad train clocked at 82 mph in a 30 mph curve that killed four people and injured more than 70 in the Bronx; and Tuesday's crash on the curve in Philadelphia.

"The Little Falls crash was a horrible scar on the face of the New York Central and it still took seven years before they spent the money and straightened the Gulf Curve," said Barrett, a trustee of the New York Central System Historical Society. He attended the society's convention in Utica May 1-3 and members visited the Little Falls crash site, where there is a commemorative plaque.

"Human error and excessive speed on curves continue to cause fatal train crashes 75 years after Little Falls," Barrett said. "How could the engineer in Philadelphia not realize he was doing twice the speed limit coming up to the curve in Philadelphia? It's frightening that it comes down to one person because humans make mistakes. They fall asleep. They doze off. They zone out. They get distracted on their cellphone."

Barrett has long been a proponent of positive train control, or PTC, a system that monitors and controls a train's operation and can override an engineer by applying brakes in cases of excessive speed approaching sharp turns.

"History keeps repeating itself since 1940 and the Little Falls wreck," Barrett said. "The technology exists. PTC is long overdue. There's no reason not to use it."

Barrett noted on that same stretch of track in Philadelphia's Port Richmond neighborhood on Sept. 6, 1943, the Pennsylvania Railroad's Congressional Limited derailed after an axle overheated and broke, causing a crash that killed 79 people and injured 117 others. It was one of the worst rail disasters in U.S. history.

"Documentaries on the worst train wrecks always show the Congressional Limited and the Little Falls crashes," Barrett said. "Unfortunately, we haven't learned the lessons of history."